Black Holes
by darkkat
Summary: A young man wakes up in an alley with no memory of who he is or what has happened to him... or what he can do.


Obligatory Disclaimer:  
  
The WoD and the concept of Mages and associated points are copyrighted to White Wolf Games.  
  
These concepts are being used without permission. In a 'nice' way, though.   
  
All other characters are copyright myself.  
  
I am making no money whatsoever from this fanfic.  
  
***   
  
Chapter One:  
  
1999  
  
He awoke with a start, breath catching in his throat as he flinched away from some unseen attacker. But there was no-one there. All his wide eyes could see was a dirty concrete wall, mostly covered with graffiti of all colours and languages. A thin sheet of rain fell on him and everything else around him. He was completely alone, although he didn't feel it. The unshakable fear that there was someone just waiting for the right moment to slit his throat was just as strong.  
  
He tried to calm his breathing, sucking in deep breaths of cold, wet air that chilled and stung his throat. He felt damp and clammy, shivering in response to the rain and the cold air all around him. His left hand was throbbing terribly, as well as feeling strangely heavy and sticky.  
  
Convincing himself that looking down at his hand would not cause multiple attackers to spring from wherever they might be hiding and tear him to shreds, he slowly looked down at his hand, lifting it up as he did so to gain a closer view. That supposedly simple movement hurt as well, and he clenched his teeth together to bear the increased pain without crying out. A hiss of breath escaped from between his clenched teeth.  
  
He was holding something in his hand, something black and shiny and long. Small raindrops had fallen on it and stayed where they had landed rather than forming rivers, giving the object the appearance of being encrusted with liquid diamonds for a moment. Looking at this though, he couldn't figure out what it was. Something in the back of his mind, though, was telling him that it was important, that he had to keep hold of it at all costs. But why? He tried to uncurl his fingers from it, in an attempt to get a closer look. Maybe that would help him to figure out what it was-  
  
Pain. Searing, stabbing, hot pain. The palm of his hand suddenly felt like it was on fire, and he actually cried out, despite his fears of invisible foes all around him. Tears sprang from his eyes as his body desperately tried to cope with this sudden influx of pain, centred in his hand. Fresh blood started to appear underneath his fingers as he unclenched his fist, and a single rivulet began to slowly trickle down his hand and wrist. His blood. The reason for the pain and heat was also slowly becoming clear as he relaxed his fist; there was some sort of cut in his hand.  
  
His fingertips were also liberally smeared with blood, some of it sticky, and at first he thought that was the difficulty in separating his fingers from his palm; semi-congealed blood was bonding them together. but as he managed to straighten out his fingers more, and more of the rest of his hand became clear, he realised that was not the only reason.  
  
The blood on his fingertips, and the difficulty in unclenching his fist had been because he had dug his fingernails and the tips of his fingers into the flesh of his palm. Four small, half-moon slashes became visible as his palm was revealed to view, red with blood both new and old. A faint sucking, ripping sound could also be heard as his fingers separated; caked blood doing its best to hold everything together but failing.  
  
Drops of rain fell into the newly-revealed wounds, making them sting even more. He shivered again - mainly from the cold and wet, but now also because of the shock. He was now losing what seemed to be a lot of blood from his hand, and the pain was making him dizzy. He had to do something about it. But what? As he desperately trying to think of what to do, he stared at his hand, as if willing the wounds to close up and heal spontaneously, leaving no trace and no pain.  
  
It was no surprise that that didn't happen. What did happen, however, was that his vision suddenly seemed to shift. Abruptly, he wasn't just seeing his hand, complete with its four ugly fingernail-shaped gashes in it; he also seemed to be seeing into the wounds. Through layers of tissue and flesh, past broken blood vessels that were still trying to transport blood through his hand but failing to pass the areas where there was just a gap, all the way down to where his fingernails had finally stopped, unable to dig in any further.  
  
All of a sudden the pain didn't seem quite as important as this strange new way of looking at his hand. Almost instinctively, he reached over with his good hand and, very gently, touched the skin at the edge of one of the crescent-wounds. It hurt, of course, but he had been expecting that and it didn't bother him as much. What he hadn't been expecting, however, was the way in which his perceptions shifted yet again with that single touch. Now not only did it seem that he was seeing into his hand and the wounds, but it also seemed as if he could feel all the layers of skin, muscle and small bones in his hand, feel how they all fitted and worked together, and how it had all been disrupted by his finger digging into his palm.  
  
The wounds were deep, he realised, but not so deep as he had originally feared. The damage was mostly tissue damage - there had been so much blood only because he had re-opened the wounds - but there were a couple of nerves that had been caught, which accounted for the tingling he could just feel in his hand, lying just below the hotness of the pain. most worryingly, however, was the fact that the wounds appeared to be becoming infected - strange black dots, almost too small for his eyes to see (even with this strange new sight) were starting to move around deep inside the wounds and along the slightly ragged edges of the gashes.  
  
He didn't actually know how he knew any of this, but somehow he did. It was a strange feeling, actually being able to look into a wound and see how bad it was, but somehow it also felt... right. It was as if someone had turned on a spotlight in his brain and shone it straight through his eyes... but even that didn't even come close to describing how it felt.  
  
Then, just as suddenly as it had first done so, his perceptions shifted again and he was back to simply staring at his hand again in the normal way, watching it as raindrops fell into the wounds and made it sting, and as blood continued to run languidly from those crescent-shaped gashes. No more deep insights into the inner workings of his hand, no layer-upon-layer analysis of the injury. The spotlight was turned off; whatever had just happened was obviously over.  
  
but the knowledge he had gleamed from it was still there. He realised that he was going to need treatment of some sort for his hand. So with that new task set in his mind, he slowly got to his feet. His legs were shaky at first, mainly as a result of the long time he had spent in the half-crouched, fetal position he had slept in, but also because of the cold and renewed pain in his hand as he accidentally jolted it while moving. His head swam for a few moments, and coloured lights flashed in front of his eyes, each exploding into black after a few moments. For a second, he thought that he was going to pass out, so he leant back against the wall behind him, eyes shut and taking deep breaths until the spinning and weakness had for the most part passed. Finally, he was able to open his eyes again and risk moving without fear of collapse.  
  
The... whatever he was holding in his hand - a torch, his mind suddenly shouted out to him in a moment of insight - was still there and feeling awkwardly heavy, so he switched it gingerly from one hand to the other, wiping it clean of rain and blood as best he could, and then put it safely into his pocket. He wasn't sure why he was taking such good care of the torch, just that he felt he had to. it felt important to him, like a part of him that he couldn't work without. It also made him feel safe, in some strange way.  
  
With his good hand, he then wiped his wet hair out of his face. There was a slight sting at his right temple as his hand brushed against it, and a slight stickiness. When he brought his fingers back from there to look at them, there was a smear of blood across them, although not nearly as much as had been leaking from his hand. Just another thing to deal with when he could.  
  
Looking around, he saw that he was in an alleyway. In truth, he had partially guessed that already from seeing the walls that had been on either side of him that had been covered in their multi-coloured graffiti, but now he was in a much better position to look and take in more of everything around him. He now realised that he had been huddled up against a large mud (and worse)-stained square trash can. It had not given much in the way of protection from the elements, but it had hiddden him from sight of the outside of the alleyway.  
  
Despite the dark grey colouring the rain brought to everything, it seemed to be late afternoon. A couple of streetlights were on and the people walking past at the mouth of the alleyway seemed to consist mostly of people in business suits and carrying briefcases or leather folders. There were also a fair number of women carrying carrier bags of various sizes, colours and shop labels. No-one seemed particularly interesting in looking down the alleyway - a combination of hurrying to get to wherever they were going and a desire to avoid seeing anything they might not want to see - and he was thankful for that. Out of curiousity he looked down at himself, to see how respectable he looked for going out in public.  
  
Scuffed sneakers, jeans, a white t-shirt and an overshirt - unbuttoned - made up his clothes. It was therefore no surprise he was cold, especially since all of them were also wet through from the rain. There were also dark, stiff patches on his clothes - most notably on the overshirt - which he assumed were from his injured hand. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about those, except hope that they wouldn't draw too much attention from anyone. All he wanted at that point was to get out of the rain and get his hand seen to. Everything else could wait until after that.  
  
Sucking in a deep breath of damp air as if to fortify himself, at the same time assuring himself that he wasn't going to be jumped on by monsters from the shadows at any moment, he set of to find a hospital or somwehere that could treat his injuries and not want any money for it, as he felt sure that anyone who had been sleeping in an alleyway behind a trash can had none. Or ask too many questions, such as his name.  
  
Because he didn't know the answers. 


End file.
